Fruit is conventionally harvested by a harvesting unit straddling at least one row of plants and mounted on the support structure of a harvesting machine that is moved along said row. To this end, the harvesting unit includes a straddling chassis delimiting a harvesting tunnel into which the plants are successively introduced to move through said tunnel between respective openings at the front and at the rear of said tunnel.
To detach the harvest from the plants the harvesting unit includes a shaker system including two shaker devices, said shaker devices being arranged on respective sides of the harvesting tunnel to delimit said tunnel transversely.
The harvesting machine further includes a recovery system for conveying the flow of harvest obtained enabling, possibly after cleaning and/or sorting, storage thereof in at least one hopper provided for this purpose or in an ancillary trailer.
However, for some plant varieties, in particular olive trees, standard harvesting units have as straddling chassis, the vaulted top of which is lower than said plants.
Because of this, on introduction of a plant into the harvesting tunnel, the top of said plant abuts against the vault of the straddling chassis with the result that the plant is bent over in said tunnel, which limits the efficacy of the shaking of said plant, in particular in relation to the harvesting of fruit at the top.
To overcome this problem, some manufacturers of harvesting machines have proposed to increase the height of the standard harvesting units to adapt said units to the height of olive trees.
However, the shaker devices of a harvesting unit increased in height in this way have a large size that compromises the efficacy of harvesting. Moreover, this increased height leads to a problem with the stability of the machine during harvesting.
To overcome these problems, document EP 2 196 080 proposes a harvesting unit including a lower front shaker system and an upper rear shaker system. The harvesting unit is adapted so that the plant is shaken in a bent state by the lower front system after which the top is shaken by the upper rear system with the plant straightened up.
This solution proves difficult to implement, however, and is not fully satisfactory for the harvesting of fruit located at the top of the plants.
The invention aims in particular to solve the problems referred to above by proposing a fruit harvesting unit that enables satisfactory harvesting of fruit present over the entire height of the plants without necessitating any modification of the structure of the straddling chassis of said unit.